Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, the highly-anticipated stop-motion sequel from Aardman Studios, the masterminds behind Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep Movie, and Flushed Away. With Vengeance Most Fowl, already holds 100% Rotten Tomatoes approval after its first critics’ screening. By snatching up the streaming rights to the film, Netflix has scored big, as Aardman Studios has a following that can bring the streamer the views it wants. However, the next Wallace & Gromit might also get the company a few awards, as the critical reception has been so overwhelming that Vengeance Most Fowl
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The way Rotten Tomatoes calculates scores might cast doubt on Vengeance Most Fowl‘s perfect rating. After all, the aggregator reduces every opinion to a binary positive/negative, meaning that slightly positive reviews still count towards a movie’s success. But that doesn’t seem to be the case here. A quick scroll through Rotten Tomatoes allows you to confirm most critics are incredibly positive.
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Metacritic helps to paint the picture of this positive reception, confirming the animated movie’s average score of 82 out of 100, enough to gain Metacritic’s “must-see” seal. For comparison’s sake, it’s worth noting that Wicked, one of the biggest hits of 2024, has a 73 Metacritic medium score and only an 89% approval rate on Rotten Tomatoes. For Netflix, that means 2025 has yet to start, but the streamer is holding what will likely become one of the year’s best releases.
What’s Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl About?
Wallace & Gromit’s journey began in 1989 when visionary stop-motion director Nick Park released A Grand Day Out, a short film about a wacky inventor and his loyal dog companion. Wallace and Gromit would star in two more shorts, 1993’s The Wrong Trousers and 1995’s A Close Shave, all well-received by critics and the audience alike. The shorts’ success turned the characters into the faces of Aardman Studios until Chicken Run dethroned them in 2000. That wasn’t the end of the duo’s journey, though.
In 2005, Wallace and Gromit got their first feature-length movie, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. It became the second highest-grossing stop-motion movie ever, behind only Chicken Run. One could hope The Curse of the Were-Rabbit would unleash a new age for the duo, but Wallace and Gromit only got another short after that, 2008’s A Matter of Loaf and Death. That means it’s been over a decade since Aardman Studios showed their iconic character some love, which raises the expectations bar for Vengeance Most Fowl. Yet, the movie has not disappointed critics after its October 2024 premiere at the American Film Institute.
Following the franchise’s usual shenanigans, Vengeance Most Fowl has Wallace inventing an automated garden gnome that turns against its creator after it gets hacked by the duo’s arch-nemesis, Feather McGraw. Feather was first introduced in The Wrong Trousers, making Vengeance Most Fowl a direct sequel to the short.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance, Most Fowl will be broadcast exclusively in the United Kingdom, on BBC One and BBC iPlayer, on 25 December 2024. The rest of the world must wait for the movie to come to Netflix on January 3, 2025.
